TERA Has (Another) Exploit Issue, This Time With One-Shot Kills

Remember a few months ago, when we learned about En Masse Entertainment's and TERA's struggles with third-party programs? As we said back then, EME's hardline stance on banning players using any kind of third-party programs might do more harm than good, as it would free up the developers of more benign programs to do whatever they felt like, knowing they'd get banned for anything from a DPS meter to a true game-breaking exploit.

That might be what happened recently, as a particularly nasty hack/exploit has made its way into the NA version of the game. It allows players to use the Valkyrie's Dream Slash ability to deal massive damage, typically insta-killing players or dealing massive damage to bosses and reducing their battles to triviality.

Take a look at this video of a PvP battle and note all the kills -- of players with nearly full health -- "Muc" racks up in just a few seconds:

That video was from Aug. 7, so maybe things have cleaned up since then? Maybe not. Here's a video from Aug. 17, that shows a boss melting like ice cream on a summer's day:

Too slow for you? Check this out:

(For an extra special a-hole moment, look at the comments on that middle video, where someone argues the definition of "hack" and passionately argues that he's not doing anything wrong. "playing with tera files to get buffs and so is game play its the same as breaking calculator program and making it do 3x4 = 13 xD." Whatever, they're still going to get banned, kiddo.)

We asked En Masse Entertainment to comment on this new issue, and the publisher confirmed that it's aware of it and working with developer Bluehole Studio to remove it from the game:

"En Masse was made aware of the exploit shortly after it became available. Since then, we have been using numerous methods to identify and ban abusing player accounts. We are actively communicating with TERA’s developers at Bluehole Inc. regarding the hack and the various ways it’s being abused to circumvent intended game design and disrupt the gameplay experience of other players."

According to the source that brought this information to our attention, Gameforge, TERA's EU publisher, also faced this issue and was, with Bluehole's help, able to cleanse it from the game. We haven't managed to verify that, but if it's true, retribution will hopefully be swift for the hackers and malicious exploiters in NA TERA.